We had the FUNNEST DAY OF FUN AND NESS.

I’d love to tell you and show you more, but you know where my camera stayed the entire time? Yeah, on the kitchen counter. I was having far too good a time to even remember to grab it.

Those of you who were there snapping cell pictures, can you e-mail me any that came out? I don’t even have your babies’ eight-week portraits! Bad breeder!

I am still SUPER tired, but the upshot is that five puppies (Harold, who is now Malcolm; Despereaux, who is now Henry; Corduroy; Handsome George, who is now Winston; and Hugo) are now home with their families. Ramona leaves on Wednesday and Bianca the week after that; both are flying out. I get Monster until the beginning of May and then we’re down to just Milo.

(OK, boring breeder stuff): Sarah and Linda were derailed by an emergency c-section on Linda’s sweet Basset Marsha – thankfully, after a very harrowing time, Marsha and babies are OK – so we were down a couple of evaluators but we did our best with show/pet stuff. Monster was the unanimous pick, which I knew at least a week ago (that dog is SO PRETTY), but I was thankful that Milo wasn’t down at the bottom of the group. As expected, we had some really, really lovely long upper arms in this group – Monster has an upper arm that’s as long as some adults’ – and fronts on all nine are very pretty (which is a huge thing). Ribbing shape is better than I’ve had consistently before, and we were very happy with toplines and croups/tails across the board. Bone and feet were another strength. Heads were all very pleasant, and I am keeping the one who is furthest away from the head faults I have now in my dogs (I tend to keep really short, sharp heads, and need more width across the foreface and cushioning in the muzzle, which is why Milo’s little saint bernard-y face is going to be so good for me). The faults in the litter were as expected, nothing that was worrying soundness-wise, which was great, and I was glad to be told that I was seeing the faults correctly and analyzing puppies right. Now we wait for movement to settle in (they’re such babies still that it’s hard to tell) and for rears to appear. On the whole I am thrilled with this litter and am so grateful to everyone who made it happen.

Back to fun: The puppies loved the crowd. I didn’t see even a moment’s hesitation and they did all their funny tricks and played all their funny games and looked around for the applause. And oh my heavens, you should have SEEN how happy Daisy Poppy was. It was like a light turned on inside her when the twentieth person came in the door. She was the undisputed queen of the day and she knew it. She was fawned over for hours and hours and she just climbed from lap to lap. What a completely precious dog she is.

Also precious: Sammy and Godric, who were the only other of our dogs that I let be loose (since we had so many visitor dogs I didn’t want to overwhelm people with my Cardigans), and thought that God had sent them a vat full of presents. They are both completely stuffed with cheese and I think I saw Sammy holding her down and washing Monster’s mom’s face.

Now that things are quiet, the four remaining have responded the way they often do to half or more leaving, by getting super excited and playing like maniacs. I keep hearing them crash into things. They’ve also realized that noise gets results, so Ramona (who was the loudest, bounciest, and most insistent of them all at the party) has spent the entire evening looking at me going “Raawwr? Mmmm? Roo. ROOR. MMMMRRRRR.”

If people send me pics I’ll post them – otherwise look for 8.5-week portraits of the four remaining if I can get them tomorrow, and please send hugs and kisses and good thoughts to those babies who are having their first nights away from home.

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